Capturing Appalachia's "Mountain People"
Shelby Lee Adams' 1990 photograph of life in the eastern Kentucky mountains captured a poignant tradition
- By Abigail Tucker
- Smithsonian magazine, March 2010, Subscribe
Esther Renee Adams, "Mamaw," was laid to rest in her own home. In the mountains of eastern Kentucky, such "country wakes" could last for days. Shelby Lee Adams
Esther Renee Adams was born on her grandmother’s birthday, June 2, and was named for her, though eventually, after “Mamaw” started calling her “Nay Bug” (because she was scared of ladybugs), everyone else did, too. No granddaughter loved her grandmother more. Mamaw could take the smart out of a wasp sting and hold her own in bubble-gum-blowing contests. She was always game to slice into the Fourth of July watermelon a few days early.
Mamaw died of emphysema in July 1990, when Nay Bug was 7. “Half of me died, too,” she says.
Mamaw was laid out in her own home. In the mountains of eastern Kentucky, such “country wakes” could last for days, as mourners emerged from the coal mines or drove out from the factories. Sometimes so many people showed up, the parlor floor had to be reinforced. Guests paid their respects to the dead, then went into another room for sandwiches, coffee and a long visit.
Not Nay Bug. While people talked outside, “you know where I was?” she asks. “Right there with my Mamaw. I stayed up with her all night.”
And when a man with a camera came and asked to take her picture, she said she wanted to lay a rose across her grandmother’s chest. “He said, ‘Sure, if it’s what you want to do,’ ” Nay Bug recalls. Then he took the picture.
Home Funeral would become one of Shelby Lee Adams’ best-known portraits of Appalachian life.
Adams wouldn’t see Nay Bug again for 18 years. He found her in the summer of 2008 at the head of Beehive Hollow, up a winding road, living in a house without running water or electricity. A coal-black teardrop was tattooed by the corner of her eye. Adams began photographing her again.
For 36 years, Adams has spent his summers in several rural Kentucky counties, watching children grow up, families flourish or fall apart and green mountains crumble after years of coal mining. Coal dust feels omnipresent in Adams’ pictures, which he shoots almost exclusively in black-and-white.
His portraits of “the mountain people,” as he calls them, are intimate, direct and sometimes bleak. Some critics—including those featured in The True Meaning of Pictures, a 2002 documentary film about Adams’ work—say he exploits a region already saddled with stereotypes involving poverty and violence. Adams says he’s capturing a fading culture—home wakes, for instance, are now less common in the mountains—and the faces of old friends. “When [critics] are taken out of their middle-class comfort zone, they are confronted with another person’s humanity,” he says. “And they blame the photographer.”
Adams, 59, has roots in both the mountains and the middle class. He lives in western Massachusetts but was born in Hazard, Kentucky, not far from where he takes his portraits. He is distantly related to Hobart Ison, an Appalachian who in 1967 fatally shot a filmmaker on his land, but Adams’ father was a supervisor for a natural gas company with contracts around the country, and his family often lived in cities, including New York and Miami. When Adams returned to Kentucky for part of each year, he says, his father taught him to look down on the “holler dwellers.”
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Related topics: Photojournalism Funerals 1990s Kentucky
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Comments (39)
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My goodness there is a stark similarity to my culture here. I am welsh and I know a lot of welsh people settled there in the 1800's. I am proud that us welsh have family values plus community spirit and so should those who live in such a fabulous place.
Posted by Koreen on February 5,2012 | 07:05 PM
While I find all of this infuriating, I must admit that I am not surprised. Growing up in this region offered me the best childhood on the planet. We did not have a lot of money growing up, but we were not as desperate as the pictures show. What this photographer is doing is akin to taking a picture of someone living under a bridge in a large metro area and claiming the image to be representative of the entire city! The worldview many hold today is so backwards - not the people of Appalachia. My sister and I had the luxury of living next door to our grandparents. Nearly all of our relatives were within walking distance. Although I moved away nearly fifteen years ago, I can still call it "home" with strong conviction. Regarding the tradition of a wake: they typically take place in a church or funeral home in my experience. Many people from the community will drop by to bring food and comfort to the grieving family. They are not completely solemn (and this is not because there is a lack of respect for the dead). Many times, we would get together and tell stories and share memories of the deceased. More often than not, these always included stories that would make us laugh. I cannot imagine trying to heal from the loss of a loved one without this community network of love and support, and this time to share memories. Finally, the reason I find these pictures so infuriating is the fact they perpetuate the stereotype. I am a 33 year old mother of two. Currently, I am a junior at Boise State University, majoring in geoarchaeology. Part of my education is funded by an academic scholarship and I have made the Dean's list every semester. However, it always seems I have to prove myself to people who hear me speak and assume I am an idiot at the outset. No, this is not because of what I say, but my accent alone (which will forever be a part of my identity, because I am PROUD of where I came from!)
Posted by Keitha Gamble on January 30,2012 | 06:06 AM
I would like to tell everyone who is concerned about the Appalachian People to send money C/O Sharon Teaney at Light House Misssion in Pineville, Ky. You can look it up on internet. It is a non profit that really helps the people of Pineville, Ky. The need hands up not hand outs. My ancestry is from here and I would love for anyone to help these people. I will try to put the website up when I find it but look around there are people right in your neighborhood that needs help.
Posted by Bridgette B on January 27,2012 | 04:39 PM
Debbie,
My mother in laws church makes several trips to Appalachia every year and delivers donated food, clothing, household items, etc. Her name is Betty Owens and if you like I can give you a phone number just email me and let me know.
Kristi
my3jemz@comcast.net
Posted by Kristi on January 26,2012 | 12:14 AM
My grandfather was a doctor. I never knew him. People would come to him for medical help and if they did not have the money they gave him something of value to them. He had a room in the house that no one was allowed to go in where he kept his medicine. He rode a horse or drove a buggy. One day he lifted the barn door to get it back on the track and had a mild heart attack. While he was resting a man came to the door to tell him that his wife was having a "hard labor" and he needed him to come up and help. My grandfather went and upon returning home he had a second heart attack and died.
My last memory of my mother's homeplace was the day I went to the family cemetary to put a gravestone on my parent's grave. It was June with the sun shining on the hills and their greenery around me and I felt a love and very close to my family there both dead and living. The people in that area of the country are tough, survivors, resourceful, close to one another and would help each other out without a second thought, family values and history are important to them, and there are many arts and crafts that are dying as the generations that know how to do them are dying.
What the people in the foothills of Kentucky and their ancestors lacked in financial wealth they made up for in a heritage of riches that cannot be matched in most areas of the country today.
Posted by Debra on January 8,2012 | 10:01 PM
My mother was born and raised in the hills of Kentucky. Many childhood memories of mine are about the summers spent visiting my grandmother, aunt, and cousins there. There is a beauty to that state, and especially in the foothills of Kentucky. Just ask anyone who has set on a front porch there watching the full moon come up over the mountain or walked across a swinging bridge over a stream. The trains ran close to my grandmother's house, and hearing a train whistle brings back memories of counting cars of coal traveling down the tracks. My cousin and I one time went walking down the railroad grade to a spot where wild black raspberries grew and we waded into those thorny branches and picked as many as we could to eat when we got back home. We brought her dog along to warn us if there were any snakes around. This was before the railroad company sprayed the weeds along the tracks killing the bushes of raspberries. I remember holley trees, fragrant honeysuckle, and a yard filled with clover that we made clover chains out of. My grandmother made cornbread that recipe had been handed down through the generations of the family, and of course it had to be made in a cast iron skillet to taste right. Her fried chicken and canned goods were the same way. We played hide and go seek for entertainment and I remember hiding in the smokehouse in the area next to where they used to hang the hog after they killed it. My grandmother would take me to the chicken coop to collect the eggs and I being five years old could only hold the basket and stay clear of the mother hen who had chicks in the pen next to us.
Posted by Debra on January 8,2012 | 10:00 PM
My husband and I want to help these families with money, food, and clothing. Does anybody know how we can get started with this, whom to contact? We could make random donations or help one specific family. Hope to hear something!
Posted by Pam Spooner on January 8,2012 | 09:08 PM
While I feel Adams is a very talented photographer, I feel appalled by the idea that he is depicted as authentically documenting what Appalachia is. He photographs the poorest, most secluded families, which I have no problem that in-particular... I have a problem with a few families and especially ONE county being used to portray Appalachia as a whole. I am from Appalachia, and I am sick and tired of everyone thinking that everyone who lives in the mountains is like this. Adams needs to stop projecting his portraits are truly documentary- if that would be the case than he would label them as a documentary of Harlan County particularly rather than generalize it as Appalachia. The Appalachians span a very long distance and there are many types of "Mountain People" as we've been referred to here. Please don't be as ignorant, and continue to reinforce the stereotype that has been cast upon us for our entire history. There is more to life in Appalachia- music, tradition, family, farming, and so forth..we are not a sad, poor people- we are rich in culture, nature, heritage and community.
Posted by Kimberly on December 3,2011 | 10:35 PM
I just watched a story about the Appalachia Mountain people. Diane Sawyer went to visit them and tell there story. My God so sad. I would like some information on where to send care packages for those families. Like a church or anyone who will hand out the clothes and toys to them. I would like to help. Noone has the right to judge them.
I hope someone sees my post here and e-mails me some infomation on who I can send items to for my new friends of Appalachia Mountains.
Big Hugs and God Bless
Debbie
Posted by Debra Garabedian on November 15,2011 | 08:20 PM
I don't know much about the mountian people! But from what I gather is that they are people that don't mind hard work and would do anything to help their own. Sometime I think I would love to live that kind of life. Be able to get away from the stinking city life and all the hate. I have the up most respect for the mountain people.
Posted by Rick Jenkins on November 7,2011 | 10:29 PM
It's stories and photos like this that has kept the world's vision of Appalachians, and hillbillies in general, as a picture of barefoot, inbred, rag-wearing, stringy-headed half-animals. This photographer is the Stephen King of visual artists yet goofy city people will insist on seeing it as reality. We see photos of city slum dwellers and don't assume it's the case for all urbanites; yet urbanites see photos of tarpaper shack dwellers and assume there are no mansions a mile down the road. How two-dimensional. I live near the location of these photos and believe me, Adams had to really look to find his models. AND he dressed the children in old fashioned and misfitting clothing in order to present that exact vision, much as traditional media have done with Appalachian children since the advent of the camera. Every time we see major networks or artsy types come in, they head for the poorest of the poor and present them as representative of our entire population. We're thoroughly sick of it, and now here's a former Native doing the same thing to us. Where is truth?
Posted by hillbillet on September 13,2011 | 10:25 PM
i for one would love to see more people telling storyes about my people here in kentucky and yes im proud of being a hillbilly i may not be as smart as the northern people but im glad to have nabors that when the times get tuff there the first ones to help we are poor money was not handed to us and we dont have the best teaching but what our morals have the lessons of love thy nabor and stand up for what we tyhink is right.
Posted by bobby joe bowman on September 5,2011 | 05:32 PM
I have been reading how back in 1934 4000 people who for generation;s lived in the mountain's. The government ran a campaign to depict these proud brave american's as dirty and stupid so as to take their land and make a park for the elite rich to play with. The government succeeded. This is just tragic! These people had for generation's carved out a niche with hard work and ingenity and thrived on their land's. Their histories are rich with ancestor's who fought in the revolution..civil war's and then to be treated the way they were?!
And now in 2011? Many are now buying up land at outrageous prices in the great smokey mountains building condo's and lavish vacation houses. The very land taken 75 years ago from a proud ppl.
Posted by guest on July 31,2011 | 03:33 PM
I make dresses for girls could you help me find someone to send dresses to in Appalachia mountains of Virginia I so want to help! A email would be great!
Thanks, Debbie
Posted by Debbie Coleman on May 31,2011 | 09:59 PM
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